Courtesy of Taste of Country
It seemed like the perfect moment. On a night dedicated to the women of country music, Reese Witherspoon announced the final award of the night at the 53rd annual Country Music Association (CMA) Awards: entertainer of the year. Carrie Underwood, the favorite for the night’s highest honor, looked like she was about become the first female artist to take the award since Taylor Swift in 2011. And the CMA went to … Garth Brooks?!
To add salt to the wound, the longtime host had to come on stage and close the show immediately after the award. Underwood, who was up for three awards, left with none to her name. This move was straight robbery by the CMA Awards.
The message was clear from the CMA Awards: This year is about women. However, even after an all-women opening act and all-women hosting lineup – with Reba McEntire and Dolly Parton joining Underwood – they still fell short.
Within the yearly timeframe for nominations for the CMA Awards, Underwood had released the history-making album “Cry Pretty,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200 chart, making Underwood the only female artist to have four No. 1 albums on the chart. Underwood also released three singles from the album, “Cry Pretty,” “Love Wins” and “Southbound,” while also embarking on a 64-date tour, “The Cry Pretty Tour 360,” which saw sold-out crowds at Madison Square Garden and the Staples Center. Within the same span, Brooks released a single, “Dive Bar,” with Blake Shelton, and embarked on a 10-date tour. However, when it came to entertainer of the year, Brooks still took home the honor for the seventh time in his career.
Underwood is only the latest chapter of an ongoing battle for women in country music. In the 53 years of the CMA Awards, only seven different female artists have taken home the night’s highest honor, the same amount Brooks has won by himself. Female artists have nine total entertainer of the year awards to their names, with Barbara Mandrell and Swift winning twice. Since 2001, Swift is the only female artist to win the award, taking it home in 2009 and 2011. Female nominations for the award are slim, with only 22 nominations for women – compared to 128 for men – since 1990. That’s only a 15% share of the nominations for female artists in the past 30 shows. Even in the album of the year category the divide is heavily uneven, with females winning the award only six times since 1996.
The inequality is beyond the award shows, unfortunately, and is shown within country radio and country songwriting as well. A recent study by the Annenberg Researchers found that only 16% of country artists are female and only 12% of songwriters are women. They also found that the average age for mainstream success is 29 for women artists in country, compared to 42 for men. This past December, Billboard reported that for the first time ever in its Country Airplay chart, there were no female artists in the Top 20.
The inequality in country music is obvious and needs to change. It is impossible to imagine country music without the powerful vocals of female artists throughout the years. Artists like Loretta Lynn, Parton and McIntire were powerhouses in the genre for decades. Shania Twain later transformed the genre in the late ‘90s, elevating the status of females in country music. Now, Underwood and Miranda Lambert headline as the new leaders of females in country music, and the road ahead for them looks like an everlasting, uphill battle.
